ns behind me in the bed, and I dared not turn around. My heart beat
so violently that I feared my wound would open. At length, one by one,
all the noises in the neighborhood ceased. I understood that I had
nothing to fear, that I should neither be seen nor heard, so I decided
upon descending to the garden.

"Listen, Hermine; I consider myself as brave as most men, but when I
drew from my breast the little key of the staircase, which I had found
in my coat--that little key we both used to cherish so much, which you
wished to have fastened to a golden ring--when I opened the door, and
saw the pale moon shedding a long stream of white light on the spiral
staircase like a spectre, I leaned against the wall, and nearly
shrieked. I seemed to be going mad. At last I mastered my agitation. I
descended the staircase step by step; the only thing I could not conquer
was a strange trembling in my knees. I grasped the railings; if I had
relaxed my hold for a moment, I should have fallen. I reached the lower
door. Outside this door a spade was placed against the wall; I took
it, and advanced towards the thicket. I had provided myself with a
dark lantern. In the middle of the lawn I stopped to light it, then I
continued my path.

"It was the end of November, all the verdure of the garden had
disappeared, the trees were nothing more than skeletons with their long
bony arms, and the dead leaves sounded on the gravel under my feet. My
terror overcame me to such a degree as I approached the thicket, that
I took a pistol from my pocket and armed myself. I fancied continually
that I saw the figure of the Corsican between the branches. I examined
the thicket with my dark lantern; it was empty. I looked carefully
around; I was indeed alone,--no noise disturbed the silence but the owl,
whose piercing cry seemed to be calling up the phantoms of the night.
I tied my lantern to a forked branch I had noticed a year before at the
precise spot where I stopped to dig the hole.

"The grass had grown very thickly there during the summer, and when
autumn arrived no one had been there to mow it. Still one place where
the grass was thin attracted my attention; it evidently was there I had
turned up the ground. I went to work. The hour, then, for which I had
been waiting during the last year had at length arrived. How I worked,
how I hoped, how I struck every piece of turf, thinking to find some
resistance to my spade! But no, I found nothing, though I h